Filmmaker Hannah Peterson Learned from Sean Baker and Chloé Zhao — Now She’s Forging Her Own Fiercely Independent Path

Put filmmaker Hannah Peterson on a film set, and she’ll know how to do most jobs. Director, writer, editor? Check, check, check. Actor? She did a tiny role for Sean Baker. DP, costume designer, line producer? Check, check, check. Casting? For Baker’s “The Florida Project,” she “would go into Targets and Wal-Marts and approach people.” For Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” she was “finding real people, and then watching how that becomes imbricated into the script and how those people become a part of this bigger movie engine.”

So when it came time to make her feature film debut, “The Graduates,” Peterson had her skills locked and her inclinations set. The film, which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best U.S. Narrative Feature, feels like a spiritual companion to Baker and Zhao’s early work, a finely told story about real human drama. With real people, too.

“The Graduates” picks up in the wake of a high school shooting that left six teens dead, and forever scarred those they left behind. Over the course of 87 deeply felt minutes, Peterson introduces us to three of them, all grappling with the loss of someone they loved very much. His name was Tyler, and we soon meet his girlfriend Genevieve (an extraordinary Mina Sundwall), his best friend Ben (“Moonlight” star Alex Hibbert), and his father John (John Cho, who also produced the film, just like Zhao).

“I think one of the most obvious things I take from [Sean and Chloé] is the tapestry of reality and bringing that into a film, having a more anthropological approach to a fiction film, really putting the work into researching something, and making sure it’s grounded into lived experience as much as you can,” she said during a recent interview with IndieWire.

She pointed to key sequences in her film that involve real people, like when some of her characters visit a grief center to share their stories. “It’s a really good example of something I took from both of them: finding real people, hearing their stories, and presenting them on screen in a way that is emphasizing the limits of what can be seen and known of someone’s reality. Also: a true sense of collaboration.”

Armed with her hands-on experience, a directing MFA from CalArts, and a trio of well-received shorts, Peterson was very intentional when it came to making her first feature. She started early. She started with people.

“I originally set out to tell a contemporary coming-of-age story in the American public school system,” Peterson said, a topic she had previously tackled in her short films. “I started with conversations. I interviewed high schoolers and just asked about their experience. This was in 2018 when there was just a constant succession of media coverage around school shootings, and it came up in every single conversation I had. Whether students had experienced gun violence in their schools or not, there was this kind of ambient anxiety around safety in schools.”

It was clear to Peterson: “There’s no way to tell a contemporary story about American public schools without touching on this.”

While Peterson is not a school shooting survivor herself, she remembered vividly the impact violence had on her own youth: She was a junior in high school during the sniper attacks that terrorized communities throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. Peterson’s own Virginia high school had to react to the very real fear people were feeling. “I watched my school harden,” she said. “We brought in resource guards, metal detectors, we were taught active shooter drills. I lucidly remembered that feeling of safety being punctured, so that was my entry point to the story.”

Peterson worked on her script for over three years, and in the course of her research, spoke to dozens of people who had either survived school shootings or gun violence of a different kind. “As I started to speak more to survivors and people who had experienced gun violence in their schools, I realized that there are schools and situations the media doesn’t cover it as much, and students are having to return back to school really quickly, within weeks,” the filmmaker said. “The idea of having to return to the site of trauma, for sometimes years before you graduate, and still go through all of the things that is teenage-hood, that was a compelling image to me.”

‘The Graduates’The Future of Film Is Female

Asked if she experienced any pushback from potential producers or cast members because of the nature of the story, Peterson was candid. “There were a lot of questions around the research that went into it, and that was something that I think made the cast members feel more comfortable around it,” she said. “To be honest, the pushback that I did feel at some point throughout. It was just speaking to people who had been through the lived experience themselves. In the script, there’s not a clear sense of anger in any character, there’s not a clear sense of activism in the film, and that is a choice that I made as a writer and director that didn’t necessarily sit perfectly well with every person who’s lived that experience. But I took that into the writing.”

Peterson said she always imagined the film as an ensemble piece — her original script was “written into three chapters of three different characters” — and she eventually hit on the idea of bonding her characters together through their shared grief for one specific person. “The idea of having these three different characters, who are representative of different people in that tapestry, that was really important to me,” she said.

Still, it’s Sundwall who really carries the film, thanks to a revelatory performance aching with authenticity. “I really set out to cast a discovery. I wanted someone who hadn’t had their time in the spotlight, and Mina came to this film with such force,” Peterson said. “She had a level of understanding and empathy toward the character that was unmatched. At the time that we filmed, her roommate, who she had grown up with, was someone was a survivor of a school shooting. She just had a level of not only understanding of the character and story, but an understanding of the responsibility and weight of the story.”

Peterson isn’t precious about her writing. She’s eager for collaboration, knowing that’s the way to get the best final work. “The script is really malleable to me,” she said. “I’m kind of making everybody write with me, whether they’re an actor, or the cinematographer, or production designer. I’m clear about that from the start. I’m always making sure that we have time and flexibility to be able to workshop things on the day. Especially with younger characters, the idea of me writing an 18-year-old, the only way for me to do that is to allow them to put it into their voice and their words. It brings a level of agency for an actor to be able to really take on their character in that way.”

But how do you find the time for, well, that kind of time during production? She writes it directly into her scripts. “There’s certain scenes, those are real people, and I knew I wanted to improvise those scenes and to have their actual words and stories,” she said.

Jamira Burely, Angela Ferrell-Zabala, Mina Sundwall, Hannah Peterson, and Alyse Nelson speak onstage during a Vital Voices private screening of the Meena Harris executive produced film, ‘The Graduates’ on June 06, 2023 in Washington, DCGetty Images for Vital Voices Gl

That includes a scene with Tyler’s basketball team, coached by his grieving dad (Cho). “I put some sample dialogue, but then I wrote, ‘Then we’ll go around and hear the actual hopes and dreams of the actual people,’ so it flags it for producers [what I’m] building,” she said. “You can’t do that for every single scene. We had very limited time to make this film, but knowing ahead of time and planning for what scenes that’s the bread and butter in, that’s how you do it on an indie film, and then having producers who are forgiving, and understanding, and allowing of that.”

Speaking of that indie budget. Peterson also edited her film, a choice borne both of economics and her sense that she would truly find her story in the edit bay. And, yes, it was also inspired by Zhao and Baker.

“I came up with Chloé and Sean, and they both edit their work, and I think it was always in the cards for me,” she said. “I think if I didn’t do it, I always would’ve wondered. I was also the cheapest, most available editor for this film. I rewrote the film entirely in the edit, and I had a feeling it was a film I would find in the edit while we were shooting it. The writing just wasn’t over. I learned the most, filmmaking-wise, from editing this film. I’m really, really glad I had the opportunity to do it, because you’re really faced with your writing, you’re really faced with your directing, you’re really faced with the good, and the bad, and ugly.”

Another part of that good, bad, and ugly: what happens after a film is finished. For Peterson, making “The Graduates” was only part of the battle, just a slice of the story. As she readied to bring it to the festivals and the indie film market, she had to contend with other forces.

“There’s something about making your first film that — unless you’re the exception to the rule [and] you have the kind of starry path — it’s like reality can slap you in the face,” Peterson said. “It’s very humbling. Something that is an important part of the journey of learning as a filmmaker is to set your expectations, and to let those expectations go to the wind. When you make a film, especially an indie film, you need to believe in it more than anything, because you’re convincing people to invest into it, and to be a part of it, and to take a risk with you. Then you make the thing, and you’re faced with a reality that it doesn’t get into every festival, it doesn’t get picked up by every distributor.”

When the film premiered at Tribeca last year, it earned plenty of critical love, including positive reviews not just from IndieWire, but RogerEbert.com, The Wrap, and Awards Radar. But no one picked it up, and Peterson had to grapple with some tough choices. Ultimately, she said, they were edifying.

“If anything, I think having my so-called expectations of what should happen with your first film — which, let’s be clear, was to have that starry path of getting into the biggest film festival, and getting bought by an awesome distributor, and having it [get a] theatrical release — having to let that go brought me back to I think what ultimately inspired me to make films anyway,” she said.

The most consistent feedback Peterson said she heard from potential distributors was that there was “no audience” for her film. “I think if you’re early in your career and you’re still gaining confidence in yourself and your work, it’s really easy to believe that,” she said. “That’s why having the experience of premiering at Tribeca was ultimately important for me, and I’m really glad the way that it worked out, because I just had that seed. I knew. It’s a public-facing festival, it’s not like an industry exclusive type of festival, so anyone can walk off the street and watch the film. It showed me that there is an audience for this film that it resonates with.”

Peterson said Zhao’s own empathy and insights helped her navigate the emotional landscape of premiering the film and then wondering and worrying over its ultimate fate. “I’m extremely glad I had Chloé as someone to talk to through the aftermath of making a film, because she’s someone who really gets that,” Peterson said. “She was someone who would be like, ‘How are you?’ and if I was like, ‘I’m fine,’ she’d be like, ‘It’s OK if you’re crying into your pillow right now. It kind of sucks, and that’s OK.’ She reminded me that, even if you get put up on a pedestal from the very beginning, at some point, you’re going to come down, and having it happen at the beginning can sometimes be a really good thing.”

The same week “The Graduates” premiered at Tribeca, The Future of Film Is Female (FOFIF) head Caryn Coleman (a longtime supporter of Peterson’s work) programmed it for a MoMA screening, complete with a “really thoughtful” post-screening discussion. “I felt really seen by her as a filmmaker. I felt like she really got it,” Peterson said. “And she told me, ‘If you ever think about an alternate way of distributing this, let me know.’ After a year of being in the traditional landscape of looking for acquisition, I called her, and I took her up on it. I still believed, despite what every other distributor had said, that there is an audience for this film, and I felt like she could help me find it.”

“The Graduates” marks the FOFIF’s first foray into distribution, an expansion of the organization’s exhibition-focused mission. Coleman plans to release more independent films directed by women or nonbinary directors soon, with a bespoke release plan for each film. Peterson’s film will get a national rollout, starting with a New York City release this week, and the filmmaker believes she and Coleman can find the audience that does indeed exist for this film.

What, we asked, does she want that audience to take away from the film? “I hope that people take away from the film what I took away from the conversations I had with young people when I was writing it: that there is a sense of hope and agency that is really rooted in a sense of collective grief,” she said. “That’s something that’s really hopeful and beautiful to me, and I hope that people have conversations afterwards about whatever they’re processing around what the film makes them feel, whether that’s about the specificity of the story, or about grief generally, or community, or family.”

And for herself? “I hope for myself that I continue being able to make work, and that I have a really solid compass about why I’m making it, and what is important in believing that there is an audience for this type of work,” Peterson said.

She’s working on new things, “definitely personal and bigger swings,” and keeping it dramatic. “Drama is something that I’m really passionate about, and I keep hearing that people aren’t investing in drama and it’s not the time for that, but that’s what I mean about having a solid compass and not being swayed into something just because you think it will get made, but really stay true to your voice,” she said. “That’s something that I’m certainly trying to do in whatever comes next.”

The Future of Film Is Female will release “The Graduates” in theaters across the U.S. starting on Friday, November 1, kicking off with Metrograph in New York.